Good will to all

Family holiday gatherings not the best place to revisit grudges, political disputes

By Leigh Hornbeck

Updated 3:12 pm, Friday, December 20, 2013

Photo: Rebecca Hall

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Illustration Rebecca Hall / MCT

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Good will to all

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Family gatherings are a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you know you're lucky because not everyone has the opportunity to celebrate the holidays with loved ones. On the other hand, there are members of your family you'd like to skewer with your salad fork.

Let's say you have a cousin who thinks you're a capitalist pig. You think he's a commie dog. You're reading Ann Coulter, he's quoting Rachel Maddow. And let's not even get started on Obamacare.

Phil Rainer, the chief clinical officer for Family and Children's Service of the Capital Region, said the underlying stresses of the holidays set us up for friction at family gatherings. We have an idealized image of what Christmas should be, and we're disappointed when it doesn't live up to the Norman Rockwell depiction. We're worried about money and gift-buying. We feel pressure to be jolly when deep down inside, we're not. And then we go to Aunt Linda's house for Christmas Eve and drink too much, drop our impulse control and tell Uncle Frank he's a freeloader.

Rainer said to approach the holidays with a renewed focus on what it's all about. The holidays are supposed to be a time of love, light, peace and giving — a fact that gets lost in the retail frenzy this time of year. If you keep that in mind, it may be easier to handle with kindness the person who is pushing your buttons. Second, don't view the holiday party as an opportunity to air long-standing differences, Rainer said. And third, if issues do come up, try to steer the conversation back to common ground. When possible, seek out the people at the party whose company you truly enjoy, and leave Uncle Frank at the other end of the house.

Bob Burg, a Jupiter, Fla.-based author and business speaker, takes it a step further. He advised staying away from "you" statements like, "You're wrong; you don't know what you're talking about." To avoid a conversation all together, try this, "I respect what you're saying, but this isn't something I want to talk about." Or, "I have a feeling we disagree on this issue, but I think you have good intent. What I like about what you're saying is that you care about people and want them to be healthy and happy. We just disagree on how to go about it."

Differing with someone's political positions is tricky, Burg said, people identify so strongly with their political views that, to insult that position is to insult them. There are commonsense reasons not to attack the commie dog at the Christmas party. For starters, it's going to upset everyone else. And second, it won't do any good.

Has anyone ever changed their opinion because they were asked "Are you just stupid or are you intentionally trying to ruin our country?"

Whenever possible, use humor. Burg, confronted with 9/11 conspiracy theorists — people who believe the U.S. government was behind the terrorist attacks — says he doesn't have that much confidence in the government to believe it could carry something like that off and keep it a secret.

He follows it up with diplomatic statements that appeal to the other person's rational side, all while holding back the urge to say, "Are you crazy?"

"I don't think a political party could have pulled that off, but members of the different groups used the tragedy to further their agenda."

It is in the spirit of the holiday to keep everyone feeling good at your family gathering. Everyone wins when the commie dog and the capitalist pig both go home thinking the other is a good guy, despite their differences.